Current Haas

From the start of the 2016 season we will be able to welcome the Haas F1 Team into the F1 fold. They have just announced one of their drivers in a live stream on their website a really good signing with the talent that is Roman Grosjean. No word of the second driver as yet.

Stewart Haas Racing in NASCAR already stands the team in good stead to getting off to a flying start. These guys know how to race. In turn they also have one of the best wind tunnels in the world and CNC factories at their beck and call as part of the Haas empire.

They seem to think they can hit the ground running and score points in their first season.

I say good luck to them.
 
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So we now have Aston Martin and Alfa shoe horning their names into teams so Maserati would sit well on the list.
 
Maserati is not teaming up with Haas this week. Now Maserati are joining Formula E! Well.....actually they're not...whatshisface said something last March about Ferrari needing to be in Formula E and from that we conclude Maserati are entering.....even though no approach has been made to the series organisers.

Maserati Formula E entry being considered

Can we tell it's the off season and journalists need something to write about or what?
 
The Haas Ferrari partnership is interesting given it helps Ferrari exposure to the US and Haas before the rules changed access to Ferrari parts and engines. It was seen as a B team but now Sauber have been set up as such with Alfa badge .. where does that leave Haas?

Can the team really expect to be front runners in say 5 years time?

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It makes sense for FIAT to enter the same championships as its manufacturer rivals - Renault and Mercedes although badging it as Maserati for business reasons.

Marchionne keeps saying if the Liberty Media don't offer proposals to make everyone happy then they will walk. Whats the chance they pull out of F1?
 
Very slim.
They threaten this every year and it never happens.
Ferrari could go to LM but I really don't think they're up for the pain of losing during the development time without the halo from F1 to cover those losses.
 
It’s a real shame that there is no independent, good, engine manufacturer. Sold to a majority of teams. Then a team like Haas could prove themselves with their construction skills, or not.
There will always be teams that are the complete package, i.e Ferrari, or Mercedes, but I don’t think that supplying other teams adds to the racing potential of that other team. The works team will always be better than the teams it supplies. I’d go as far as saying I don’t think it should happen.
 
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It’s a real shame that there is no independent, good, engine manufacturer. Sold to a majority of teams. Then a team like Haas could prove themselves with their construction skills, or not.
There will always be teams that are the complete package, i.e Ferrari, or Mercedes, but I don’t think that supplying other teams adds to the racing potential of that other team. The works team will always be better than the teams it supplies. I’d go as far as saying I don’t think it should happen.

I am not sure it would make an ounce of difference. The huge gap between the top (Ferrari/Mercedes/Red Bull) and the mid-field has almost nothing to do with those teams being supplied inferior engines to the works teams (if that happens at all). The difference is pretty much all determined by the aerodynamics/chassis. Put differently, the mid-field are already massively losing the battle in construction skills. This is mostly a matter of budget.

With that in view, it makes very little sense for the engine manufacturers to supply inferior parts to their customers. It makes more sense from a QC point of view to make all engines to exactly the same specifications. There might be some natural variation in the process with the works time getting the first pick, but I highly doubt there is much of a difference to made there. (Unless a manufactures is facing a shortage of parts, i.e. Renault at the end of this season.) Anyway, this could easily be evened out through the rules. (New engines are to be supplied to the FIA in lots of 6, whenever a team (works or customer) needs a new engine they are assigned a random one from the lot.)

The main advantage gained by a works team is that engine and chassis can be developed in conjunction leading to both being better adapted to each other. However, this advantage is lost in any other supplier/customer relation whether or not the manufacturer is running it own team or not.

It seems to me that the often repeated "F1 needs an independent engine supplier" trope, is mostly a piece of Red Bull propaganda. Red Bull's interest is to minimize the potential for performance differences coming from the engine, because it plays to their strength: aero. However, when you look at it more closely, there appears to be little merit to the argument.

Finally, note that the fact that Red Bull is 5-2 vs the Renault works team in seasons that Renault supplied Red Bull and operated its own works teams is clear evidence that the "The works team will always be better than the teams it supplies." is simply false.
 
TR

You do realize that without independent engine suppliers (coventry-climax and cosworth) such storied teams as Lotus, McLaren, Brabham and Williams (plus a legion of less-well-known teams) would have never existed.
 
siffert_fan You don't know that.

Anyway, the fact that such type of small start-up cannot be that successful in modern F1 has little to do with the lack of independent engines. The biggest factor is increased professionalism. The big teams are making few mistakes and are missing very little. To break into the top you need an equally professional (and well funded) setup. Reb Bull showed that this is possible (without "independent" engines), but requires significant resources. (Toyota show that significant resources is no guarantee of success though.)

Titch That the statement "The works team will always be better than the teams it supplies." is false is a fact not an opinion. This modern "facts are only opinions" thing is bullshit.
 
Not to go off topic too much but clearly the engine in the works Mercedes is different/better than their customer cars. The Renault works teams is only in it's infancy and, I suspect, once they get closer to the front Red Bull will find that their engines are not quite so good. Ferrari won't let any customer team threaten them, witness the fact that only one race has ever been won by a customer team and that was in exceptional circumstances.
 
Renault turned down Torro Rosso's engines at the end of the season due to 'reliability' issues. It allowed Renault to jump past them in the constructors championship. Funny how that worked.

It was freely admitted by Mercedes customer teams that Merc have an engine mode they don't.

For the sport to work you need engine manufacturers and racing teams. It's quite simple. That's how it used to be other than Ferrari. If you have someone running both then you end up with domination and teams going bust.
 
FB The Renault works team was not in its infancy in 2009-2011, yet it was handily beaten by its Red Bull customers. Ferrari customer teams never winning races, seems to be mostly a consequence of Ferrari choosing to supply teams that it perceives as no threat. There is therefore no need to supply them with inferior engines (and since it is more effort to actually do so, unlikely that they are.)
Do you have any evidence that the Mercedes customer engines are any different then the one supplied to the works team? (Again, none of the customer teams pose any threat to Mercedes. Why then go through the trouble of producing engines to a lower spec and forgo the QC advantages of producing a single spec engine?)

It think the only evidence we have seen (in recent years) of a manufacture giving preferential treatment to its works team over its customer in terms of supplied parts was the Renault/Toro Rosso situation at the end of the year. Renault was facing a shortage of parts and had to resort to using refurbished parts. Consequently, there probably was a large spectrum in the quality of the parts. Faced with the choice of which team to give the best parts, the only sensible answer (from their perspective) was their own works team. It may be necessary to put rules in place to better handle such situations.

(Also, I agree this is getting off-topic, if we want to continue this discussion it should be split off to a different thread.)
 
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